The first known hybrid between a pampas fox and a domestic dog was discovered in Brazil after a traffic accident.
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The animal, which was nicknamed the dog-fox, was found after being taken to a veterinarian in 2021, and the hospital team could not determine what the creature was, according to a report in the British newspaper The Telegraph.
In a recently published study, scientists examined the animal’s genes and discovered that the animal’s mother was a pampas fox, and its father was an unspecified breed of domestic dog.
The dog-fox resembles both a dog and a fox and shares characteristics of both animals, according to scientists. It refused food and preferred to feed on live rodents. It barks like a dog but has thick fur like that of a fox.
Flavia Ferrari, a conservationist who worked with the animal, told The Telegraph that it was an “amazing animal.” “It was not as docile as a dog, but it also lacked the expected aggressiveness of a wild canid when handled,” she said.
This type of crossbreeding between species of different genera is relatively rare and has not been previously documented in South America.
According to The Telegraph, the animal recovered at the veterinary hospital of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and was transferred to the São Braz Conservation Center in Santa Maria.
